1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, image processing method, and computer readable medium, which generate digital document data with a link to information from a paper document or digital document data.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, paper documents or digital documents which include “objects” and “sentences which refer to objects” have been popularly used. “Objects”, in this case can be, “figure”, “drawing”, “photo”, and “illustration” regions included in documents. “Sentence which refers to an object” indicates a sentence in a body, which is used to explain or exposit “object” or quotes it for the purpose of comparison. The “sentence which refers to an object” will be expressed as an “object reference sentence” hereinafter. In a document in which correspondences between “objects” and “object reference sentences” are not easily recognized, one requires much time to read that document, and also requires extra time to understand the contents of the document.
The following example illustrate a document in which correspondences between “objects” and “object reference sentences” are not easily recognized. In a document including a plurality of pages, (1) the “object” and the “object reference sentence” are located in different pages; (2) the “object” is and the “object reference sentence” are located in the same page, but the “object” and “object reference sentence” are located separately; and (3) Either the “object” or “object reference sentence” is too small to be viewed.
As described above, in a paper document or digital document in which correspondences between “objects” and “object reference sentences” are not easily recognized, the reader suffers a problem where he or she requires much time to read the document, and also requires extra time to understand the contents of the document. In order to solve such problem, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-066196 discloses a technique which creates hypertext data by generating links between figure number descriptions and figure descriptions in a body upon optically scanning a paper document to convert that document into a digital document. Upon browsing the digital document created by this technique, for example, when the user clicks a “figure number” in the body using, for example, a mouse, a figure corresponding to the “figure number” can be displayed on a screen.
However, according to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-066196, link information from the figure number (that is, an anchor term in the body) in an “object reference sentence” to an “object” is generated, but link information from the “object” to the “object reference sentence” as that in an opposite direction is not generated. For this reason, the user requires much time to search for the “object reference sentence” corresponding to the “object”.
Next, a problem posed upon creating link information in the opposite direction (a link from an object to an object reference sentence) will be examined. When the body includes many “object reference sentences” corresponding to one “object”, an object reference sentence from which the object is to be linked cannot be determined. For example, if the object is linked with an object reference sentence which appears first in the body, when the user browses the first “object reference sentence” corresponding to the “object”, that object reference sentence is unlikely to be a desired explanation part. Therefore, the objective of the present invention is to allow the user to easily browse a plurality of object reference sentences when a plurality of object reference sentences corresponding to one object are included. Also, the present invention has as its objective to allow the user to easily select whether he or she returns to a page of an “object” or subsequently browses another “object reference sentence” after browsing of one object reference sentence.